Most of the newbies and few administrators handling the deployment of their company’s ASP.Net applications on the Windows Server must be knowing about the basics of how ASP.Net is associated with the IIS web server. Here’s a quick tip for you to quickly check whether the exact version of .NET framework has been installed on the Server and also to check whether it has been registered with the IIS or not.

In this scenario, I'm going to consider a fresh installation of the Windows Server (2008 R2/ 2012 R2). SO make sure you have the below mentioned configuration done accordingly.

How to Find The Existence of the .NET Framework and Its Files

Navigate to this location, to make sure the .Net Framework that you are wanting/looking for is installed.

In most of the cases people might ignore this, assuming they have already configured ASP.Net by choosing from the server roles or any other version of .Net application that was working earlier.

This step will guide you to check whether your new application (with respect to the .Net Framework compatibility) has its asp.net component registered or not.

Simply Check ASP.NET 4.5 has been Installed via IIS

To check that .net 4.5 has been installed on the server, please just simply create a website in IIS and hit the “Select” button to check the .Net framework versions available to create Application Pool.

If you find v4.5 instead of v4.0, then it clearly justifies that .Net framework version 4.5 or above (4.5 / 4.5.1 / 4.5.2 only) has been installed and made available to run any website that requires this framework’s version.

If you don't find it, then navigate to the framework’s root folder (refer pic 2) and run “aspnet_regiis.exe” which will in turn register the asp.net component to the IIS.

Once you have registered the ASP.Net component, restart the IIS from the command prompt by typing “iisreset”, then launch your IIS Manager and follow the Step 3, to check the version listed in the available frameworks in the “Add Website” windows as shown above.

Now you are all set to go and start deploying your web application through Web Deploy / FTP or any other.

Web optimization frameworks include two defaults transform type JsMinify and CssMinify which is used by ScriptBundle and StyleBundle respectively. However we can create our own custom transform type to processe references as per our need. To create custom transform type, we need to create class which implements IBundleTransform interface.

IBundleTransform interface define a method named Process which process bundle response. In developer preview version, Process method had only one parameter of type BundleResponse, however onwards RC release, Process method introduced one more parameter of type BundleContext. In this post, we will see how we can utilize this additional parameter while creating our custom transform type.

BundleContext

As name suggest, with BundleContext, we can get information about bundles which could include existing bundle information, bundle url, HTTP context for bundle, etc. Following is the list of all property of BundleContext. - BundleContext.BundleCollection : We can get collection of all bundles including default and custom bundle in application through this property. - BundleContext.BundleVirtualPath : This property expose virtual bundle url i.e. ~/bundles/MyBundle. - BundleContext.HttpContext : This property is type of HttpContextBase, and we can have access of HTTP context through this property. This is very much useful property when we are creating transform type which generate dynamic response. For e.g. we can access query string parameter passed to bundle url (~/bundles/MyBundle?id=123) through this property (context.HttpContext.Request.QueryString["id"]) and we can use it to create dynamic bundle response. - BundleContext.UseServerCache : Default value of this property is true. It means only first request to bundle url will be intercepted by transform types and once response is generated it will be stored in server cache and further request to bundle url will be served from server cache without processing it. This will help to reduce bundle processing time and to increase performance. If we set BundleContext.UseServerCache to false then all request will be processed by transform type this is only necessary when bundle url are generating dynamic response. See detailed walkthrough later in this post showing how to use this property in accordance with BundleResponse.Cacheability.- BundleContext.EnableInstrumentation : Default value of this property is false. This is used for tracing and analysis purpose. We can check value of this property and can write tracing code accordingly. We can also set true to this property to enable instrumentation for further lifecycle of Web optimization frameworks for current bundle request.

BundleResponse

Now let us recall BundleResponse parameter from old post. BundleResponse is used to retrieve list of files included in bundle so we can process it and generate response for bundle. As BundleResponse is used to generate response of bundles, it needs to take care of two primary properties of generated response. One is response content type and another one is HTTP Cache-Control header. So BundleResponse also expose properties for the same. Following is the list of all properties in BundleResponse class. - BundleResponse.Files : This is IEnumerable collection of files which is included in bundle. We can iterate through this collection and process file content to generate bundle response. - BundleResponse.ContentType : Through this property, we can set content type for bundle so that browser can render it appropriately. Default content type "text/html". - BundleResponse.Cacheability : We can use this property to set Cache-Control HTTP header of bundled response. Default value of this property is Public. - BundleResponse.Content : Anything which we set as a value of this property, that content will be sent back to browser as a response of bundle.

Following is the complete code which shows how to create custom transform type and how we can use it with bundling.

Bundle and truly dynamic response

As we noted earlier, we can set BundleContext.UseServerCache to false in order to process all bundle request and generate dynamic response. Let try to simulate this by small walkthrough and see it works or we need to take care any additional parameter.

public void Process(BundleContext context, BundleResponse response)

{ context.UseServerCache = false; response.Content = DateTime.Now.ToString(); } We are returning current date time with UseServerCache set to false. Now try to hit bundle url multiple times by pressing F5. Oops… it seems it has processed bundle response only first time. Let dig more into this, open another browser and hit same url… ahmm it seems it has processed bundle response one more time… again press F5 multiple times…bad luck

As we can see, it seems (read again it seems) it is processing bundle response only first time for separate client (is it really? nop). Nop this is not the case. In fact this is how client deals with it due to HTTP cache control header. Confused? See response header of bundle url to get more information.

As we noted earlier default value of BundleResponse.Cacheability is Public. So even if we have set BundleContext.UseServerCache to false then also due to Expires response header and Public Cache-Control header client is not sending request back to server. So in this case we need to also set BundleResponse.Cacheability to NoCache. We can also set it to Private but in some client we need to press Ctrl + F5 to refresh bundle response.

It might error about ASP.NET Ajax 4.0 scripts: 0x800a139e – JavaScript runtime error: AjaxControlToolkit requires ASP.NET Ajax 4.0 scripts. Ensure the correct version of the scripts are referenced. If you are using an ASP.NET ScriptManager, switch to the ToolkitScriptManager in AjaxControlToolkit.dll.

I’ve also seen it error about: ‘MsAjaxBundle’ is not a valid script name. The name must end in ‘.js’.

It seems the new web forms project template adds ‘Microsoft.AspNet.ScriptManager.MSAjax 4.5.6′ package, this appears to conflict with the toolkit, so remove this via “Manage NuGet Packages” Visual Studio might still leave the dll in your bin directory even after a clean, make sure you manually clean that out.

In this article we will learn how to enable Unobtrusive Validation in ASP.NET 4.5.

Visual Studio 2012 provides some new Validation features that include Unobtrusive Validation. When you work with this Validation mode you will find that there is not much difference in this validation and previous validations but to enable this type of validation you had to first configure your Web Application.

There are three ways to enable the Unobtrusive Validation in your Web Application; they are: - By using Web.Config file - By using Global.asax file - By using Page_Load event on each page

Lots of people are excited about the new bundling and minification feature in the next version of ASP.NET and MVC. One major drawback I see a lot of people clamoring about is the fact that you cannot conditionally disable bundling or minification when you are in debug mode. Out of the box (and to be clear, I’m referring to the version that ships with MVC 4 beta) it’s impossible to debug your CSS and Javascript.

I expect this will change in the release version, but for now you are forced to create your own custom bundles (something you’d end up doing anyway) and conditionally check if you’re in debug mode to short-circuit the bundling/minification.

Disabling minification while in debug mode

It’s as simple as an #if DEBUG line and creating a transformer that does nothing. For example:

Now when you reference this javascript bundle like <script src="@System.Web.Optimization.BundleTable.Bundles.ResolveBundleUrl("~/Scripts/js")"></script> in a view it will render a single bundled and minified script when in release mode, but as a single bundled, non-minified file while in debug mode.

Disabling bundling while in debug mode

The above approach improves this situation, but I don’t think it goes far enough. If I’m going to have multiple source files, I want to debug with the same multiple source files, at least initially. It would get too confusing writing code in a several files and then debugging it in a single monolithic file.

As an experiment to see if it was possible, I ended up building a better bundler that does just what I want: bundles and minifies in release mode, but doesn’t bundle or minify when the build is set to debug.

To summarize, I’m using the same technique to determine debug mode, and of course this could be extended to conditionally bundle or not based on any boolean. The interesting code is in the UnbundledFiles(string bundleUrl) method.

Currently, there is no concept of named bundles – bundles are specified simply by the virtual path of the resultant bundle. This means all our calling code in the view has to give is the virtual path of the bundle. We have to start from that and uncover all the physical files deeper within the BundleTable.

The rest is just boilerplate code to turn those raw physical files back into relative virtual paths and into the proper html tags.

Finally, you’ll note that I have an HtmlHelper method in there, CssBundle(this HtmlHelper helper, string bundleUrl). To render a bundle link in a view, this must be used. Since the result of a bundle could be one or multiple files, I decided the simplest approach would be to allow the BetterBundler to render the full html tag itself. This could easily be changed or enhanced.

HTML5 WebSockets allow you to perform two-way (duplex) communication between the client browser and the server. ASP.NET 4.5 and IIS 8 provide support for WebSocket protocol so that you can program WebSockets in your ASP.NET web forms and ASP.NET MVC applications. This article discusses what WebSockets are and how to develop web applications that take advantage of HTML5 WebSockets.Overview of HTML5 Web Sockets Typically a communication over the web is comprised of two distinct parties participating in the communication, viz. the client and the web server. An ordinary web page uses a request-response model of communication wherein the browser sends a request to the server and the server then sends back a response. Each request and response uses a new connection and that connection is closed once the response is returned by the server. As you might have guessed, such a communication is poor in terms of performance since a new connection is established between the same client and the server every time. Additionally, such a communication can't be two way, i.e. client talking to server and server talking to the client simultaneously. In the case of two-way or duplex communication both the parties participating in the communication can communicate at the same time. A common application of the duplex communication is chat systems such as MSN or Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk. In any chat system, two or more members can chat with each other at the same time. As far as HTML5 is concerned, the technique to achieve two way communications is Web Sockets. Unlike the request-response model, WebSockets keep the underlying communication channel open throughout the course of communication. A WebSocket based communication typically involves three steps: - Establishing a connection between the client and the server or Hand Shake. - Asking the Web Socket server to listen to the incoming communication - Sending and receiving data Web applications use HTTP protocol for their functioning and HTTP protocol essentially makes use of the request-response model. The plain HTTP protocol isn't well suited for performing two-way communications. The WebSockets therefore, need to "upgrade" the plain HTTP protocol to WebSocket protocol. This "upgrade" takes place while establishing the connection between the client and the server. In order to upgrade the communication from plain HTTP to WebSocket, you need a web server that is capable of doing this upgrade.Enabling WebSocket Protocol in Windows 8 As far IIS is concerned, IIS 8.0 that ships with Windows 8 is capable of accepting Web Socket communications. If you are developing a web application that makes use of HTML5 Web Sockets, you may need to install WebSocket support in IIS 8.0. The following figure shows the "Turn Windows features on or off" option from the control panel. It can be used to install WebSocket protocol. Notice how the "WebSocket Protocol" feature is checked under "World Wide Web Services". If the IIS installation doesn't have WebSocket protocol enabled your ASP.NET applications won't be able to receive and respond to the WebSocket requests on the server. A WebSocket based application consists of two parts, viz. WebSocket server side code and WebSocket client side code. The WebSocket server side code sits on the web server and "listens" to the incoming communication from clients. When some communication is received from the client it processes the communication and typically sends some communication back to the client. If there is no communication from the client the WebSocket server can either keep waiting for the communication or can terminate the communication channel. The WebSocket client side code makes use of the WebSocket object of HTML5 for the purpose of sending and receiving data to and from the WebSocket server side code. The WebSocket client side code follows the same coding pattern regardless of your web server software. As far as ASP.NET is concerned, IIS 8 and certain .NET framework classes together allow you to develop WebSocket server side functionality. To understand how the client side and server side code goes hand in hand let's develop a simple application that performs a two-way communication. The web form that acts as a WebSocket client is shown below: Using the above web form you can send a text message from the client to the server. The server then sends the same message back to the client (this is purely for the sake of simplicity and testing purposes. You can send any other data from the server. Clicking on the Stop button stops the server and no further communication can take place between the client and the server.Coding the Client Side Open the default web form and add the following jQuery code to a <script> block:var socket; $(document).ready(function () { socket = new WebSocket("ws://localhost:1046/WebSocketGenericHandler.ashx"); socket.addEventListener("open", function (evt) { $("#divHistory").append('<h3>Connection Opened with the Echo server.</h3> ');}, false); socket.addEventListener("message", function (evt) { $("#divHistory").append('<h3^gt;' + evt.data + '</h3> '); }, false); socket.addEventListener("error", function (evt) { $("#divHistory").append('<h3>Unexpected Error.</h3> ');}, false); ... }); The code shown above declares a global variable named socket to hold a reference to a WebSocket object. A WebSocket instance is then created by passing the URL of the WebSocketHandler.ashx. The WebSocketHandler.ashx contains the WebSocket server side code that "listens" to the client requests. You will develop WebSocketHandler.ashx later in this article. Notice how the URL uses ws:// protocol instead of http://. Next, event handlers for the three events, viz. open, message, and error, are wired using the addEventListener() method. The open event is raised when the readyState property (discussed next) changes to 1 (OPEN) and indicates that the connection is ready to send and receive data. The message event is raised when a message is received from the WebSocket server. The error event is raised when an error occurs during the communication with the Web Socket server. Inside the message event handler the data sent by the server is retrieved using the evt.data property. The returned data is then appended to a <div> element. The other event handlers simply output the specified messages in the <div> element. The data from the client is sent to the server when the Send button is clicked. The click event handler of the Send button looks like this:$("#btnSend").click(function () { if (socket.readyState == WebSocket.OPEN) { socket.send($("#txtMsg").val()); } else { $("#divHistory").append('<h3>The underlying connection is closed.</h3> '); } }); The click event handler of the Send button checks the readyState property of the WebSocket object. If the readyState is OPEN, it calls the send() method on the WebSocket instance. This read only property returns the current state of the connection. Possible values are 0 - CONNECTING, 1 - OPEN, 2 - CLOSING, 3 - CLOSED. The send() method sends data to the WebSocket server side code over an established connection. The text entered in the textbox is passed as a parameter to the send() method. You can close the underlying connection by calling the close() method of the WebSocket object as follows:$("#btnStop").click(function () { socket.close(); });

Coding the Server Side

The WebSocketHandler.ashx contains the server side code that listens and responds to the client requests. This code is shown below:

public class WebSocketHandler : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { if (context.IsWebSocketRequest) { context.AcceptWebSocketRequest(DoTalking); } } ... } The above code shows an ASP.NET generic handler - WebSocketHandler - that triggers the WebSocket server. The ProcessRequest() method of the generic handler first checks whether the incoming request is a WebSocket request. This is done by checking the IsWebSocketRequest property of the HttpContext object. This property works hand-in-hand with the IIS 8.0 WebSocket module and returns true if an incoming request is a WebSocket request. A Web Socket request is different than an ordinary HTTP request in that instead of using http:// protocol it uses ws:// (Web Socket) protocol. If the IsWebSocketRequest returns true, the AcceptWebSocketRequest() method of the HttpContext is called. This method takes one parameter - user function - that supplies a function that listens and responds to the client requests. In this case the user function contains the logic to listen to the incoming data and send it back to the client. The user function supplied to the AcceptWebSocketRequest() method should be an asynchronous function as shown below:public async Task DoTalking(AspNetWebSocketContext context) { WebSocket socket = context.WebSocket; while (true) { ArraySegment buffer = new ArraySegment(new byte[1024]); WebSocketReceiveResult result = await socket.ReceiveAsync(buffer, CancellationToken.None); if (socket.State == WebSocketState.Open) { string userMessage = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer.Array, 0, result.Count); userMessage = "You sent: " + userMessage + " at " + DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString(); buffer = new ArraySegment(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(userMessage)); await socket.SendAsync(buffer, WebSocketMessageType.Text, true, CancellationToken.None); } else { break; } } } The DoTalking() method is marked as "async" indicating that the code inside it is going to run in asynchronous fashion. The DoTalking() method returns a Task object. The Task class acts as a wrapper to the asynchronous code. The DoTalking() method receives a parameter of type AspNetWebSocketContext. The AspNetWebSocketContext class gives you access to the WebSocket through its WebSocket property. The WebSocket class is the server side counterpart of the HTML5 WebSocket object. An endless while loop is then started so that the server can continuously listen to the incoming requests. To receive the incoming data, the ReceiveAsync() method of the WebSocket class is used. The ReceiveAsync() method is invoked along with the await operator. In this case the awaited task is to receive incoming data and store it in an ArraySegment, a byte array. The results of the receive operation are stored in WebSocketReceiveResult object. If the WebSocket is open as indicated by the State property, the received data is sent back to the client using the SendAsync() method. If the State property has any value other than Open, the while loop is exited thus terminating the server.Summary HTML5 WebSockets allow you to perform two-way (duplex) communication. To use HTML5 WebSockets in an ASP.NET application you need to enable the WebSocket protocol in IIS 8.0. You can then use IsWebSocketRequest property and AcceptWebSocketRequest() method to start the client-server communication. Using WebSockets, you can develop web applications such as Chat systems that require the ability to send and receive data simultaneously between the client and the server.

When developing complex .NET applications sometimes you need to find out the details about the caller of a method. .NET Framework 4.5 introduces what is known as Caller Info Attributes, a set of attributes that give you the details about a method caller. Caller info attributes can come in handy for tracing, debugging and diagnostic tools or utilities. This article examines what Caller Info Attributes are and how to use them in a .NET application.

Overview of Caller Info Attributes

Caller Info Attributes are attributes provided by the .NET Framework (System.Runtime.CompilerServices) that give details about the caller of a method. The caller info attributes are applied to a method with the help of optional parameters. These parameters don't take part in the method signature, as far as calling the method is concerned. They simply pass caller information to the code contained inside the method. Caller info attributes are available to C# as well as Visual Basic and are listed below:

Caller Info Attribute

Description

CallerMemberName

This attribute gives you the name of the caller as a string. For methods, the respective method names are returned whereas for constructors and finalizers strings ".ctor" and "Finalizer" are returned.

CallerFilePath

This attribute gives you the path and file name of the source file that contains the caller.

CallerLineNumber

This attribute gives you the line number in the source file at which the method is called.

A common use of these attributes will involve logging the information returned by these attributes to some log file or trace.

Using Caller Info Attributes

Now that you know what Caller Info Attributes are, let's create a simple application that shows how they can be used. Consider the Windows Forms application shown below:The above application consists of two Visual Studio projects - a Windows Forms project that contains a form as shown above and a Class Library project that contains a class called Employee. As you might have guessed the Windows Form accepts EmployeeID, FirstName and LastName and calls AddEmployee() method of the Class Library. Though the application doesn't do any database INSERTs for the sake of illustrating Caller Info Attributes this setup is sufficient.

The Employee class that resides in the Class Library project is shown below:

The Employee class is quite simple. It contains a constructor, a method named AddEmployee() and three properties, viz. EmployeeID, FirstName and LastName. The caller info attributes are used in the constructor and AddEmployee() method. Notice how the caller info attributes are used. To use any of the caller info attributes you need to declare optional parameters and then decorate them with the appropriate attributes. In the above example the code declares three optional parameters, viz. sourceMemberName, sourceFilePath and sourceLineNo. Note that sourceLineNo is an integer parameter since the [CallerLineNumber] attribute gives a numeric result. The optional parameters are assigned some default values. These values are returned in case there is no caller information. Inside the constructor and AddMethod() the code simply outputs the parameter values to the Output window using Debug.WriteLine() statements.

The Employee class thus created is used by the Windows Forms application as follows:

If you run the Windows Forms application and see the Output window you should see this:

The Output window shows the caller information

As you can see the Output window shows the caller information as expected.

Using [CallerMemberName] with INotifyPropertyChanged Interface

Though the primary use of caller info attributes is in debugging and tracing scenarios, you can use the [CallerMemberName] attribute to avoid using hard-coding member names. One such scenario is when your class implements the INotifyPropertyChanged interface. This interface is typically implemented by data bound controls and components and is used to notify the user interface that a property value has changed. This way the UI can refresh itself or do some processing. To understand the problem posed by hard-coding property names see the modified Employee class below:

The Employee class now implements INotifyPropertyChanged interface. Whenever a property value is assigned it raises PropertyChanged event. The caller (Windows Forms in this case) can handle the PropertyChanged event and be notified whenever a property changes. Now the problem is that inside the property set routines the property names are hard-coded. If you ever change the property names you need to ensure that all the hard-coded property names are also changed accordingly. This can be cumbersome for complex class libraries. Using the [CallerMemberName] attribute you can avoid this hard-coding. Let's see how.

To use the [CallerMemberName] attribute to avoid hard-coding the property names you need to do a bit more work. You need to create a generic helper method that internally assigns the property values. The following code shows how this can be done:

The SetPropertyValue() method uses only the [CallerMemberName] attribute. It takes three parameters. The first reference parameter is the variable that holds a property value (strFirstName for example). The second parameter is the new property value being assigned to the property. Finally, the third optional parameter supplies the caller member name. Inside the SetPropertyValue() method you assign the property value to the variable, raises the PropertyChanged event and calls Debug.WriteLine() as before.

Now, you need to call the SetPropertyValue() method inside the property set routines as shown below:

Now when you assign any property value, the set routine will call the SetPropertyValue() method and pass its name to the SetPropertyValue() method. Inside the SetPropertyValue() method you use this name (propName parameter) without hard-coding the actual property name.

Summary

.NET Framework 4.5 introduces Caller Info Attributes that can be used to obtain information about the caller of a method. Three attributes, viz. [CallerMemberName], [CallerFilePath] and [CallerLineNumber] supply caller name, its source file and the line number at which the call was made. You can use caller info attributes for tracing, debugging, logging or diagnostic purposes.

In versions of ASP.NET before 4.5 there was no direct way to enable a user to upload multiple files at once. The FileUpload control only supported a single file at the time. Common solutions to uploading multiple files were to use a server-side control such as those from Telerik or DevExpress or to use a client-side solution using a jQuery plugin for example. In the latter case, you would access Request.Files to get at the uploaded files, rather than retrieving them form a FileUpload control directly. Fortunately, in ASP.NET 4.5 uploading multiple files is now really easy.

The FileUpload Control with HTML5 Support

The FileUpload control has been enhanced in ASP.NET to support the HTML5 multiple attribute on an input with its type set to file. The server control has been expanded with an AllowMultiple attribute that renders the necessary HTML5 attribute. In addition, the control now has properties such as HasFiles and PostedFiles that enable you to work with a collection of uploaded files, rather than with just a single file as was the case with previous versions of the control.

All you need to do to enable multiple file uploads is set the AllowMultiple property of the FileUpload control to true:

Notice how the multiple="multiple" attribute tells the browser to enable support for multiple files. Each browser that supports this feature uses a slight different interface. For example, in Chrome it looks like this:

while in Opera it looks like this:

All major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari) except Internet Explorer 9 support this feature. IE 10 will support uploading multiple files as well, so hopefully this limitation is soon a thing of the past. While Safari seems to officially support this feature, I couldn't make the example work with multiple files. This could be a bug in Safari.

Working with the uploaded files at the server is similar to how you used to work with the control, except that you now work with a collection of files, rather than with a single instance. The following code snippet demonstrates how to save the uploaded files to disk and assign their names to a simple Label control, reporting back to the user which files were uploaded:

With this code, each uploaded file is saved in the App_Data folder in the root of the web site. Notice that this is just a simple example, and you would still need to write code you normally would to prevent existing files from being overwritten, and to block specific files types from being uploaded.

ASP.NET Web Forms became popular due to the wide range of data bound controls such as GridView, DetailsView and ListView. The earlier versions of ASP.NET, however, were a bit rigid about how data was bound to these controls. Most of the time developers had to use one or the other data source control (SQL Data Source, Object Data Source, Entity Data Source etc.) to bind data from the underlying data store with the data bound controls. ASP.NET 4.5 provides a flexible alternative to data bind these controls - model binding. Using the new model binding features you can use methods instead of data source controls to perform CRUD operations. This article explains how the new model binding features can be used. You will also learn to use strongly typed data controls.

Data Binding in ASP.NET Server Controls

In the earlier versions of ASP.NET you used data bound controls and data source controls hand in hand to display and edit data. First, you needed to configure a data source control, such as Object Data Source or Entity Data Source and then set the DataSourceID property of a data bound control to the respective data source control. The data bound control would have one or more fields of some inbuilt type (BoundField for example) or template fields. If the control was using template fields you used Eval() data binding expression for one way data binding and Bind() data binding expression for two way data binding.

The following sample markup shows a GridView control bound with an Entity Data Source.

Notice how the DataSourceID property of the GridView is set to EntityDataSource1. Also, notice the use of Eval() and Bind() to bind the Country column.

Though data source controls work well in simple situations, developers often need complete control on how the data is fetched and how it is saved back to the database. This calls for a more code centered approach than the control driven approach. That is where the new model binding features come into the picture. Using model binding features you can write methods in your code behind class that perform the CRUD operations on the underlying data store. This way you have total control over the process of fetching and editing the data. Have a look at the following markup that uses the new model binding features:

This time the GridView control doesn't use a data source control. The SelectMethod, UpdateMethod and DeleteMethod properties are set to method names GetCustomers, UpdateCustomers and DeleteCustomers respectively. These methods reside in the code behind. You will develop a complete version of this example in the following sections.

In addition to the code centered data binding, you can also use data within the controls in strongly typed manner. This is especially handy for template fields. Instead of using Eval() and Bind() data binding expressions, you can now use Item and BindItem properties respectively. These properties work along with the ItemType property. The use of these properties will be clear from the following markup.

Notice the code marked in bold letters. The ItemType property is set to an Entity Framework Data Model type - Customer. Once you do so, you can access properties of Customer class in a strongly typed fashion. Instead of Eval("Country") you now use Item.Country and instead of Bind("Country") you use BindItem.Country. This way there can't be any errors while specifying column names because they are available to you in the intellisense in strongly typed manner.

Creating a Sample Website

Now that you understand the basics of model binding and strongly typed data binding, let's create a web form that illustrates the complete process in detail. You will be using Customers table from the Northwind database in this example. Begin by creating a new ASP.NET Web Site. Then add an Entity Framework Data Model to its App_Code folder and create model class for the Customers table. The following figure shows the Customers model class in the Visual Studio designer

Open the default web form and place a GridView control on it. Configure the GridView to show CustomerID, CompanyName, ContactName and Country columns. Also add Edit and Delete command buttons. The following markup shows the GridView after adding these columns:

Notice that the ItemType property of the GridView is set to NorthwindModel.Customer and its SelectMethod, UpdateMethod and DeleteMethod properties are set to GetCustomers, UpdateCustomer and DeleteCustomer respectively. You will be creating these methods in the following sections.

Selecting Data

In order to display data in the GridView you need to write a method that fetches data from the data store and then specify it in the SelectMethod property of GridView. So, switch to the code behind and add a method named GetCustomers() as shown below:

The GetCustomers() method returns an IQueryable collection of Customer objects. Inside it fetches all of the records from the Customers table and returns them to the caller. Note that we have enabled paging in our GridView. When you enable paging for a GridView, behind the scenes it fetches only the required number of records as specified by the PageSize property.

Updating and Deleting Data

The methods UpdateCustomer() and DeleteCustomer() do the job of updating and deleting a Customer respectively. The UpdateCustomer() method is shown next:public void UpdateCustomer(Customer c){ NorthwindEntities db = new NorthwindEntities(); var data = from item in db.Customers where item.CustomerID == c.CustomerID select item;

The UpdateCustomer() method accepts a parameter of type Customer. At runtime, when you modify a GridView row and click the Update button, UpdateCustomer() method will be called and the corresponding Customer object is passed as its parameter. Inside, you find out a specific Customer based on its CustomerID, assign the modified values and then save the changes to the database by calling the SaveChanges() method.

The DeleteCustomer() method follows a similar method signature but internally deletes a Customer. The following code shows the DeleteCustomer() method:

The DeleteCustomer() method receives the Customer being deleted as a parameter. Inside it fetches a Customer matching the CustomerID and deletes it using the DeleteObject() method.

Now, run the web form and try editing and deleting a few Customer records.

Adding Validation Support

Though the GridView is able to modify Customer data, there are no validations on the data being saved. One way to enforce the validations is to use a combination of template fields and validation controls. However, there is an easy alternative - Data Annotations.

Data Annotations are special attributes that you apply on the data model properties. They specify validation criteria such as maximum length, minimum length and specific data format (Email address, URL etc.).

To use Data Annotations add a new class in the App_Code folder and name it as CustomerValidations. The CustomerValidations class will store only validation information for the Customer class. You could have added the data annotation attributes directly to the Customer data model class but to avoid accidental overwriting during model recreation it is recommended to isolate them in a separate class.

The CustomerValidations class makes use of data annotation attributes such as [StringLength] and [Required]. The former attribute ensures that the entered data is within a specified maximum length. The later attribute enforces that the property value must be provided. You can also use many other data annotation attributes depending on your requirement.

As of now the CustomerValidations class is a stand alone class. You need to associate it with the Customer data model class using the [MetadataType] attribute. To do so, open the Entity Framework Data Model file (Model.Designer.cs) and add the following piece of code:

The [MetadataType] attribute specifies the type of the class that contains validation information (CustomerValidations in this case).

Now, open the web form and place a ValidationSummary control below the GridView. Set its ShowModelStateErrors property to true. The ShowModelStateErrors property controls whether data model validation errors should be displayed in the ValidationSummary or not.

In addition to displaying validation errors to the end user, you should also ensure that the changed Customer details are saved in the database only if model validations are successful. To do so, modify the UpdateCustomer() method as shown below:

Notice the code marked in bold letters. The UpdateCustomer() method now checks the state of the model using the ModelState.IsValid property. If all the model validations are successful, the IsValid property will return true and only then will changes be saved to the database.

Now, run the web form again and try to enter some invalid data. You should see validation errors similar to the following figure:

Summary

ASP.NET 4.5 supports model binding that allows a more code centric approach for performing CRUD operations on the data. Instead of using Data Source Controls, you can now write methods in the code behind file that select, insert, update and delete data from the underlying data store. The SelectMethod, InsertMethod, UpdateMethod and DeleteMethod properties of data bound controls are used to specify the respective method. You can also make use of Data Annotations for performing validations on the data being entered. Thus the new model binding features provide a more flexible and powerful approach to data binding.

Asynchronously running code can improve the overall performance and responsiveness of your web application. In ASP.NET 4.5 web forms applications you can register asynchronous methods with the page framework. The ASP.NET page framework and .NET 4.5 asynchronous programming support then executes the operations in asynchronous fashion. This article shows how this can be done.

Example Scenario

Consider that you have a web application that needs to call two ASP.NET Web API services namely Customer and Product. These services return Customer and Product data from the Northwind database respectively. Now, assume that each of these services take 5 seconds to complete the data retrieval operation. If you use synchronous mode for calling these services then the total time taken will be 10 seconds. Because the execution will happen sequentially - first Customer service will complete and then Product service will complete.

On the other hand if you invoke these services in asynchronous fashion, the service operations won't block the caller thread. The Customer service will be invoked and control will be immediately returned to the caller. The caller thread will then proceed to invoke the Product service. So, two operations will be invoked in parallel. In this case the total time taken for completing both of the operations will be the time taken by the longest of the operations (5 seconds in this case).

Async, Await, Task and RegisterAsyncTask

Before developing web forms applications that execute asynchronous operations you need to understand a few basic terms involved in the process.

A task is an operation that is to be executed in asynchronous fashion. Such an operation is programmatically represented by the Task class from System.Threading.Tasks namespace.

When an asynchronous operation begins, the caller thread can continue its work further. However, the caller thread must wait at some point of time for the asynchronous operation to complete. The await keyword invokes an asynchronous operation and waits for it to complete.

The async modifier is applied to a method that is to be invoked asynchronously. Such an asynchronous method typically returns a Task object and has at least one await call inside it.

Just to understand how async, await and task are used at code level, consider the following piece of code:

Here, method MyMethodAsync() is marked with async modifier. By convention, asynchronous method names end with "Async". The MyMethodAsync() returns MyObject wrapped inside a Task instance. Inside the method a remote service is invoked using GetDataAsync(). Since MyMethodAsync() needs to return data retrieved from the service, the await keyword is used to wait till the GetDataAsync() method returns. Once GetDataAsync() returns the execution is resumed and further code is executed. The data is finally returned to the caller.

NOTE: For a detailed understanding of async, await and Task refer to MSDN dicumentation. Here, these terms are discussed only for giving a basic understanding of the respective keywords.

ASP.NET page framework provides a method - RegisterAsyncTask() - that registers an asynchronous task with the page framework. Tasks registered using the RegisterAsyncTask() method are invoked immediately after the PreRender event. The RegisterAsyncTask() method takes a parameter of type PageAsyncTask. The PageAsyncTask object wraps the information about an asynchronous task registered with a page. The following piece of code shows how they are used:

The Get() method of the CustomerController class selects all the Customer records from the Customers table whereas the Get() method of the ProductController class selects all the Product records. For the sake of testing, a delay of 5 seconds is introduced in each Get() method. The Get() methods return an IEnumerable collection of Customer and Product objects respectively.

Now, go to the web forms project and open the code behind file of the default web form. Here, you will write a couple of private methods that invoke the Web API developed previously. These methods are shown below:

The InvokeCustomerService() method invokes the Customer Web API whereas InvokeProductService() method invokes Product Web API. Both the methods essentially use an HttpClient to get data from the respective Web API. Notice that both the methods have async modifier and return a Task instance that wraps the actual return type (List<Customer> and List<Product> respectively). The GetAsync() method of the HttpClient object is an asynchronous method. Call to the GetAsync() is marked using the await keyword so that further statements are executed only when GetAsync() returns. The GetAsync() method accepts a URL of the respective Web API. Make sure to change the port number as per your development setup. The GetAsync() method returns an HttpResponseMessage object. The actual data is then retrieved using ReadAsStringAsync() method of the Content property. The ReadAsStringAsync() will return data as a JSON string. This JSON data is converted into a .NET generic List using DeserializeObject() method of the JsonConvert class. The JsonConvert class comes from the Json.NET open source componenet. You can download Json.NET here.

The InvokeCustomerService() and InvokeProductService() methods are called inside another private method GetDataFromServicesAsync() as shown below:

As shown above, GetDataFromServicesAsync() is also marked as async and returns a Task instance. Inside, a StopWatch class from System.Diagnostics namespace is used to find the time taken by both of the operations to complete. InvokeCustomerService() and InvokeProductService() methods are then called. The returned Task instance is stored in task1 and task2 variables respectively. The WhenAll() method of Task class creates another Task that completes when all the specified tasks are complete. In this case it creates a Task that completes after complition of task1 and task2. Actual data returned by the respective Web API is retrieved using the Result property of the respective Task objects. The time taken to complete the operation is measured by the StopWatch and is displayed in a Label.

The next step is to register GetDataFromServicesAsync() with the page framework. This is done using the RegisterAsyncTask() method as shown below:

As you can see, Page_Load event handler registers an asynchronous task using RegisterAsyncTask() method. The RegisterAsyncTask() method accepts an instance of PageAsyncTask. The PageAsyncTask instance in turn wraps the GetDataFromServicesAsync() method created earlier.

The final step is to set Async attribute of the @Page directive to true:

<%@PageAsync="true"Language="C#"CodeBehind="WebForm1.aspx.cs"... %>

The Aync attribute of the @Page directive indicates that this web form will be executed in asynchronous fashion. Web forms that use RegisterAsyncTask() method must set the Async attribute to true, otherwise an exception is raised at runtime.

This completes the application and you can test it by running the web forms application. The following figure shows a sample run of the web form:

A sample run of the web form

Though the code doesn't show the synchronous execution of the Web API operations, for the sake of better understanding the above figure shows time taken for synchronous as well as asynchronous execution. Recollect that both the Get() methods sleep for 5 seconds and hence the synchronous execution takes approximately 10 seconds. However, the asynchronous execution takes approximately 5 seconds. As you can see the asynchronous operation improves the overall performance of the application.

Summary

Using async and await keywords you can create operations that run asynchronously. Such asynchronous tasks can be registered with the page framework using RegisterAsyncTask() method. Registered tasks run immediately after the PreRender event of the web form. Asynchronous operations can improve the overall performance and user responsiveness of a web application.

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